"I think the accident helped me to say, just go for it.
"That combined with seeing this wonderful woman called Agnes Burnell, singing in her 70s, who told me, while holding a cigarette and a glass of whisky, 'You have to be a better actress than a singer to do these songs'."
O'Sullivan is not a conventional cabaret performer though - while she takes inspiration from the German "kabaret" of old, and the storytelling style of artists like Kurt Weil, her song choices have a more contemporary rock 'n' roll slant: Nick Cave, Radiohead, Tom Waits, Arcade Fire, David Bowie and Trent Reznor amongst them.
"I think I was inspired by their type of storytelling.
"When I was growing up at home, I was hearing all the music that my sister was listening to through the wall, David Bowie and Pink Floyd, and then my parents listened to Jacques Brel and the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, and classical music, so I wasn't trained at all, but that was all happening around me while I was growing up and I think it seeped in."
"Some people might think of someone reclining on a chaise lounge or lying across a piano when they hear the word cabaret, but it's quite different to that.
"I really admire women like PJ Harvey and Patti Smith who can be a force of nature on stage, so for me it's about trying to be that vital, and that captivating, and letting the music take over."
She loves the process of taking other people's stories and emotions and finding a way to inhabit them on stage, allowing herself to feel and behave in certain ways that she never would in everyday life.
"I find it very cathartic to sing these emotive kind of songs and to show that vulnerability of wildness or happiness or anger, and while I'm friendly and open off stage, I'm certainly not the person I am on stage, so it does let you be someone else.
"But there's a certain embarrassment too when you leave the stage and you go, I can't believe I just did that, but you have to go into it uninhibited, because that's the only way to unlock the audience."
O'Sullivan thinks it's possible that her dual nature of letting herself run wild and then her subsequent embarrassment could have something to do with her half-French, half-Irish genes.
"In one way I'm quite glad not to be fully French when I sing these songs, because maybe I wouldn't be able to see the black humour, or add that element of repression.
"I think it's quite a schizophrenic thing of having this emotional side, and then being kind of embarrassed about it - like if you think of Irish dancing, with your hands down by your sides, and your legs are flailing all around the place and you're thinking 'I cannot believe I'm doing this, so I have to keep my upper body still'.
"So in many ways I am Irish, but then I have this other side that comes alive on stage, and even though part of me is embarrassed to be that emotional, I'm thinking 'Jeez, how can you not be? If you're not, what are you doing up there?'"
She also likes to create contrasts within the show - some songs are dark and serious, others more impassioned, and others tapping into that Irish sense of humour.
She might seem perfectly poised and contained to begin with, but then she'll take you down a very human path of dissolution.
"The show is sort of about starting off all enigmatic, but then just unravelling slowly until you're standing barefoot, and your dress doesn't fit properly and your hair is messy, there's a real joy in that, because that's like life.
"I love the Leonard Cohen line, 'There's a crack in everything and that's how the light gets in', I love that the imperfections can be the most interesting things.
"The show is about unlocking how vulnerable you can be, but also how fierce you can be, and I'm more of a scaredy cat in real life, but on stage I put it all out there."
Who: Camille O'Sullivan
What: Auckland International Cabaret Season
Where and when: Camille O'Sullivan performs her show at the Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber from Thursday September 3 to Saturday September 5, and also appears as a special guest in Lady Sings The Blues on Wednesday September 2
